In my days as a young man I was always skeptical, never believing anything without some real evidence. I prided myself on my skepticism until one night when I was shaken to my core by a very real and strange event. I lived alone in a small one-bedroom apartment in row with several neighbors. The eerie circumstances occurred on a chilly winter night during the Christmas holiday season. I had almost finished wrapping some gifts, but it was late and I decided to call it a night and go to bed. The presents and wrapping paper and clear tape remained on the dining table just outside my bedroom door. I flopped into bed and fell into a deep sleep. My sleep was soon interrupted by strange noises outside my open bedroom door. I thought it sounded like paper rattling and tape being ripped. I tried to ignore the sounds and drifted in and out of slumber. The noises persisted late into the night and I was either too tired or too scared to get up and investigate them. The feeling of being watched came over me as I awoke suddenly lifting myself onto my elbows. A shadowy figure stood at the foot of my bed. I yelled out in terror and my heart pounded. I observed the shape as it moved across the dark room and vanished through the wall. The next morning I noticed many pieces of scotch tape stuck to the bedroom door molding as if it was deliberately placed there. Later, that same week, an elderly next door neighbor discreetly confided to me that he had been frightened by a ghostly apparition coming out of his wall. He also confided that the previous tenant of my apartment had been an elderly woman who had died in her sleep one night. After this I was never skeptical again.